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The return of the real by Hal Foster
Reviews

From: Marker
Category: Books
Date: 03 September 2003

Review

Strange how the idea of privilege, value, quality and other such prejudiced hierarchies have been deconstructed, only to be replaced by the discombobulated name-checking, obscurantist babble and jargon of critical theory. To put it simply why not use more easily understood language if you really are serious about breaking down the old prejudices and privileges of modernism and before. Why slavishly follow and only discuss critical fashion (Kristeva Lacan, Barthes, Foucault, et al the artists: Duchamp, Warhol, Sherman) if you are so against the mono-culture and imperialism of contemporary capitalism.

I cannot believe the liberators, and the they do have some good ideas, would write in a way that cannot be understood by the educated bourgeoisie let alone the masses. What order of repression are we talking about here.

To put it simply (I keep trying unlike them) what's the point of all this brilliant wordy critical theory when all it's done is sanction crap art and had a negligible political effect. Those who made us white male europeans rethink race, gender, and sexuality did something great. Those who got lost in the outer reaches of theory's rhetoric do us all a disservice: making the beautiful tedious, and the political obscure.

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